Crypto Party, Brains!, Baathists, Red Rosa Luxemburg

Saturday evening went to the Melbourne Crypto Party, a very well attended event (c76 based on head-count) at a great evenue. The principle of the meeting was sound; we don't send our mail without being enclosed in an envelope, so why do we do we send material in clear-view across digital media? So privacy and security issues are important, and people are beginning to understand that - especially as various States continue their various campaign against such communications. The presentations were mostly of a very high level (which of course, in tech-speak, means they were only modestly useful), although hasimir did give a good, practical talk on GPG for email clients; the same character has also contributed an insightful article on the Isocracy Network. Overall however, whilst newcomers in particular would have found Crypto Party useful, I would have preferred something a little more solid in the material and presentation.

On Sunday Katherine Phelps gave another invigorating and entertaining address on brain lateralisation, critical of popular psychology myths which overstate the distinction and particular the tendency to over-value holistic creativity over analytical logic or vice-versa. I couldn't help thinking of some of the very cool software that I've had some involvement with. After this positive experience the social justice meeting was a somewhat less than optimal; a visit from the pro-government front "Australians for Syria" group argued that the media and Amnesty International is involved in a conspiracy against secular Syria, that only "foreign terrorists" are responsible for the civilian killings etc. Preparing to meet them half-way, I asked how they expected to stop the violence given that (a) neither the Assad regime nor the Free Syria Army are likely to give up and (b) most civilian deaths occur by air and artillery strikes in population centres, rather than small arms or assassinations. To say the least, the question wasn't answered - instead we were told from a former Army captain that "Eighty percent of Syrians support our beloved leader". Leaving such nonsense one can only ponder that it is unsurprising that two branches (Stalinism and Baathism) of left-wing fascism have much in common.

Appropriately, I have been reading a great deal of Rosa Luxemburg of late, possibly the one good Marxist in the old historical tradition. She certainly had no illusions about the idiotic claim of rights of "nations" to self-determination - as if nations can have any rights at all independent of the rights of the people who live in them. She also argued for a dialectical mediation between revolutionary spontaneity and political organisation - a theme which one would also find in her arguments on the Mass Strike. Finally, and as can be expected, she made a number of extremely prescient remarks about the trajectory of the Russian revolution as early as 1918. Wondering aloud, perhaps the time is right for a Rosa Luxumburg conference?